room.

'Well, sir, are ye in any mind to tell the truth yet?'

'I didn't take it, father; I never seen it' 'Vary good; yell just stay
there.'

Dick, with his hair staring from his head in all directions, pulled
on his boots and trousers, and, gathering his other belongings in both
arms, went off to make his toilet in the back-kitchen. The heavy day
began for Paul, and when he had dressed he prowled disconsolately about
his prison limits. In the ceiling of one of the back rooms there was
a trap-door, and he began to wonder if he could open it There was a
crippled three-legged table in the next apartment, and two old chairs,
the rush bottoms of which had given way. He lugged these beneath the
trap and mounted. He had two or three tumbles, and anything but a cat
or a boy would have broken its neck several times over; but at last he
succeeded in forcing the trap, and scrambled up. The joists of the roof
and the rough inside of the slates were all he saw at first; but in a
while he discerned a solid-looking shadow in the near distance, and made
towards it. It proved to be a small table, and on it, covered thick with
dust, were a broken jug, a broken cup, and a broken table-knife. What
brought these things in so curious a place Paul never knew; but there
they were, and the spot in an instant was a robber's cave, and full
of the most palpitating and delicious fears. He seized the broken
table-knife as a weapon, and dashed back towards the trap-door. His
movement towards the table must have taken him over some protected
place--some region where a wall or beam made the lath-and-plaster
flooring sound beneath his feet. But in his backward dash he missed
this. The thin and fragile stuff gave way beneath him, and he came
through with a tearing crash, and fell on the floor of the room beneath
with a shock which snapped his teeth together and left him dizzy and
half stunned. There was a big rent in the ceiling, and the floor was
covered for a square yard or two with hairy plaster and fragments of
wood.

Paul thought at first that he was broken all over, but, coming to gather
himself together, found himself whole. He transferred the crippled
table and the chairs to their original places, and stowed away the
knife between the cords and the mattress of his bed. Then he listened
dreadfully to discover if the noise of his fall had awakened any
answering commotion below stairs. Growing easy on this point, he began
to be aware that he